


Shout About It

by cafephan



Category: Phandom/The Fantastic Foursome (YouTube RPF)
Genre: Brief mentions to other YouTubers, References to bullying, Songfic, parent!phan
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-21
Updated: 2015-08-21
Packaged: 2018-04-16 11:45:13
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,334
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4624146
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cafephan/pseuds/cafephan
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Dan and Phil impart wisdom to their daughter on one of her darkest days.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Shout About It

_Songfic for ' **[Little Me](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uTExRvD1Cho)'** ; I strongly advise listening to it as you read :) _

\---

“Did Nadine seem a little... off to you at dinner?” Phil asked during the ad break of one of the mindless reality shows he had roped Dan into watching with him.

“You noticed too? I thought it was just my overprotective dad trait kicking in” Dan replied, and both men shared a worried glance as they spared yet another concern for their seven-year old daughter, who had politely requested to go to her room straight after dinner (which she barely ate any of) and not to be disturbed. Determined not to be helicopter parents, Dan and Phil had allowed it, but were now reflecting on the decision as a mistake.

Without so much as a second thought, they had ascended the staircase and had their ears to their daughter’s pastel pink door, and both tensed upon hearing the soft yet erratic sobs from within.

Phil bit his lip as he considered his actions, he wanted to respect Nadine’s wishes to be left alone, but he couldn’t leave her crying all alone when she was clearly suffering, could he?

The decision seemed to be made when Dan mouthed ‘should we go in?’ presumably having had the same internal debate. Phil nodded decisively, he had promised to put both Dan and Nadine before anything else in the world, after all.

Dan pushed the door open slowly, and was greeted with pitch darkness, the blackout curtains pulled across fully and all lamps and light sources switched off. Even in the darkness, he could make out Nadine’s figure on the bed, curled into a ball and seemingly facing the wall. Phil placed a hand on Dan’s shoulder so he could see the scene too, and he couldn’t stop a slight gasp from escaping his lips, which didn’t go unnoticed. Nadine’s head lifted from its previous position and turned to face her parents, but after a few seconds flopped back down, defeated.

“Nay, what’s wrong?” Dan asked, ghosting his thumb over the light switch, waiting for the appropriate moment. Phil remained silent, but his hand was wrapped around Dan’s arm tightly.

“Just leave me alone, please dad” she pleaded, voice shaky and weak, cracking at the end of the last syllable. Dan swallowed back the lump in his throat which had formulated due to his daughter’s state, and turned to face Phil, who shook his head then nodded towards the light switch which Dan flicked on instantaneously.

As light filtered through the room into every crevice, Nadine’s shrunken form was everpresent. She was, as Dan thought, curled into a ball and facing the wall, although it was now obvious that she was shaking too. Unsure of what to do, both took a further step into the room, closing the door behind them.

Nadine didn’t react, instead remained in her foetal position, letting the sobs come thick and fast.

“We’re not leaving until you tell us what’s going on, Nadine” Phil stated as he let go of Dan’s arm and crouched at the side of the bed, and Nadine moved into a sitting position, leaning against the headboard with her knees pulled into her chest. Her eyes were swollen, red and puffy, the sleeves of her jumper were drenched, as was the duvet where she was previously laid. It broke both Dan and Phil’s hearts, naturally, especially as they didn’t know how long Nadine had felt like this.

“It’s… some girls at school…” she managed to croak out through sobs, and dabbed at her eyes again.

Phil looked over at Dan, whom nodded and walked over to sit beside Nadine.

“What did they say to you” he prompted, tone calm and steady as a rock.

“They said that,” she paused to wipe her eyes again and let out an unsteady cough, “they said I was ugly and fat”

Dan’s heart broke. Nadine had, since she was bestowed upon Dan and Phil at age two, been a ray of sunshine, blissfully oblivious to the world’s negativities. With her blue eyes, rosy cheeks and glossy blonde hair that cascaded down her back, he found it impossible to see where the other girls’ logic was from. Nadine had never had any negative influence in her life until she started at a new (public) school due to the family moving into a new house, all she had known was the guarded life of a privately tutored education, surrounded by the polite and friendly faces of the friends of her famous fathers.

His hands balled into fists, but calmed substantially when Phil placed one of his hands over Dan’s, and nodded as if to say _I’ll take it from here._

“You don’t believe that, do you, love?” Phil asked softly, moving to sit at the foot of the bed in front of Nadine and Dan.

Nadine shrugged helplessly and collapsed into Dan’s chest, balling his jumper into her fists as she sobbed more. Dan wrapped his arms around his daughter sub-consciously, shushing her softly and kissing her hair supportively. He sent a worried glance to Phil, who blinked back tears and took a deep breath before tapping Nadine’s ankle gently to regain her attention.

“Did,” he paused to swallow the lump in his throat which was corrupting his speech pattern, “Did they say anything else to you?”

Nadine nodded slowly.

“Tell us what else they said, love” Dan requested, and Nadine flicked her gaze between her parents before settling it on the duvet below her.

“They said that I was worthless, that you didn’t love me,” she revealed, and Dan immediately opened his mouth in rebuttal but Phil held up a finger to halt him as Nadine continued, “but I told them that wasn’t true… did I do the right thing?” she asked, making eye contact with Phil directly afterwards. He nodded and smiled supportively, which Nadine tried to replicate, but she appeared too broken to do anything but cry.

“We love you more than anything in this world, that’s why we tell you every night when we tuck you in” Phil spoke eloquently to make sure every phoneme was crystal clear and sincere, and when Nadine’s sobs slowed down somewhat he felt somewhat more put together.

“But when they called me the other things, I didn’t say anything. Was that wrong?” she asked Dan this time, and he shook his head rapidly to get his point across.

“No, it wasn’t wrong. But you know they were telling a lie there, don’t you?” he replied, and again Nadine shrugged.

“Have you told a teacher about this, Nay?” Phil asked, and Nadine nodded, wiping away an escaping tear that was rolling down her cheek.

“But they always believe the girls over me” her voice was small and defeated, and Phil’s eyes widened involuntarily, and he nodded at Dan, who had his phone in hand ready to dial the school’s number and leave an unflattering and probably vicious voicemail at nearly midnight. Once he had left the room, Phil took his place beside Nadine, and she moved to sit cross-legged opposite him, and he followed suit.

“What do I do if they say things again? I’m scared, dad” she croaked, and focused her attention to playing with her hands in her lap.

“Okay, Nadine, listen to me,” Phil requested, and Nadine tore her gaze away from her lap to meet her father’s, “both me and dad went through similar things when we were your age and it happened for a long time. Now we’re going to share some things with you, okay?”

Nadine nodded, listening intently.

“What do you want to be when you’re older?” he asked, and the blonde dipped her head, a tear fluttering along her eyelashes.

“I want to be beautiful” she replied, and Phil physically felt his heart sink. He was expecting to give some advice for a profession, he wasn’t expecting this. Nadine was only seven, seven years old, she shouldn’t be thinking and worrying about such things. Nadine, who had once been so oblivious to such ideals and was perfectly content in who she was and what she was, was now reduced to the broken girl that Phil saw before him now. It was heartbreaking how much of his younger self he saw in his daughter’s current state.

He took both of Nadine’s hands in his own, and she reluctantly made eye contact with him.  “You’re the most beautiful girl I’ve ever seen, Nadine, inside and out. And I’m more than one hundred percent certain your father will agree with me on that” Nadine shook her head and flicked her gaze downwards as a fresh batch of tears dropped from her eyes onto the baby blue polka dot duvet.

“You can be anything and everything you want to be in this world,” he told his daughter, meaning every word, as it was what he needed to be told at her age, “you can change the world, you can change someone’s individual world, you can be and do anything you want to”

Nadine shook her head but made eye contact with Phil again, though this time with tear filled eyes. “If that’s true, why do those girls tell me something else? I’m scared to say anything back, and I don’t know why”

Phil squeezed her hands and watched on as Nadine let out a few sobs and let the brimming tears escape onto the duvet. “I was the exact same, Nay, I know it feels so hard now, but you’re so so much stronger than them, and you are everything they’re not” he assured her, and she pressed her lips into a fine line as she attempted to process his words.

“What do you-“ she was interrupted as her other father re-entered the room, flushed cheeks and phone gripped in hand, which he soon placed upside down on the nightstand. He sat beside Phil, and Phil placed Nadine’s hands into Dan’s as he got up.

“I’m just going to fetch something, okay? Tell your dad what you’ve told me” he excused himself before disappearing out of the room, leaving Dan and Nadine alone.

And so Nadine did.

And it took all of Dan’s self-will (and then some) to bite back profanities against the (also seven year old) girls who had made Nadine feel the way she did, as well as fighting back his own tears. He needed to be the strong parent, not the guy who crumbles. Nadine needed a rock of a parent, and that was what Dan was determined to be.

He squeezed Nadine’s hands softly as she sniffled and blinked back some tears, and she looked at him expectedly.

“Nadine, everything your dad said was true. You know that, don’t you?” he asked, voice quieter than what was ideal. Nadine was about to shrug, but bit her lip instead, and then nodded slowly as she made eye contact with her father, uncertainty still starkly evident.

“You can’t write a book from a single page” Dan told her, hoping his analogy wouldn’t be too complex for Nadine to understand.

“What do you mean?” she enquired, and Dan smiled softly, wishing someone would have told him such things when he was her age.

“These girls won’t be in your life forever. You’re going to go on and do great things, amazing things, in this world, and you’ll make us proud, you’ll make yourself proud, and you’ll prove those girls wrong. You can be anything you want to be, as your dad has said to you already” Nadine was hanging on his every word, and her eyes were glistening by the end of his explanation.

“When I was your age, do you know what I wish I was told?” he asked, the rhetorical probably a poor choice in hindsight, but Nadine shook her head, still engrossed in whatever Dan would say.

“That it’s okay to speak up, to shout out”

“But I’m scared to do that, they’d laugh at me or say something else” Nadine didn’t sound convinced as she sighed.

“Then you tell them everything, every single thing, that both me and your dad have told you tonight. You have every right to be proud of yourself, Nadine. You’re beautiful, you’re wonderful, and the world needs to know about it” Dan told her, rubbing the palm of Nadine’s hand with his thumb. He was speaking from the heart, meaning every word, telling Nadine everything that he wished he could have been told when he was in the same position, at around the same age. He could only hope his vocabulary wasn’t too complex for her to understand, but by the way she bit her lip she seemed to be toying with whether to believe him or not.

“Really?” she asked, and Dan nodded with a smile, which Nadine seemed that much closer to being able to reciprocate.

“Really” he repeated in confirmation, seeing so much of his younger self in Nadine, in her mannerisms and how she seemed defeated by bullies. In telling his daughter all of the things he wishes he could have been told back then, it was almost as if he was somehow going back in time, and listening to his own advice.

And that’s how he knew Nadine would be okay.

“Thanks, dad” she gushed before launching herself at her father, wrapping her arms around his chest and hugging him tightly. Though Dan wasn’t entirely sure whether or not Nadine fully believed him, his gut instinct was telling him that he had made a positive impact.

He also felt an overwhelming sense of self-pride, almost as though his former self was thanking him too.

It was then that Phil re-entered the room, carrying a pile of books which he dropped onto the bed in a disorderly fashion. He picked one back up and placed it in Dan’s lap, and the brunet identified it immediately as his secondary school leavers’ book. He furrowed his eyebrows as he attempted to think of why Phil would have dug both of their leavers’ books out of the storage cupboard, but the realisation dawned on him almost straight away.

Phil flicked to the bookmarked page and opened the book, and gently placed it onto Nadine’s lap, and pointed to one of the panels on the page.

“Tell me what you see” he prompted, and Nadine’s eyes widened.

“That’s you…” she trailed off as she turned her attention to Dan’s leavers’ book, which was also flicked to a bookmarked page.

“And that’s you…” she trailed off again as she looked up at Dan, who nodded down at her.

“What do they have in common?” Phil asked, almost positive Nadine would be able to identify it.

“You both look so sad… and you have bags under your eyes, and you have a little black part on your chin” she pointed to Phil’s picture, specifically the poorly covered bruises on his chin, and he gulped, reaching for Dan’s hand which was offered immediately.

“That’s right. Can you guess why we look like that? And why my chin is like that?” he asked, and Nadine was silent for a few seconds as she pieced everything together, then nodded slowly, lifting her head to flick her gaze between her fathers.

“Because you were too scared to say anything back and shout out” she repeated Dan’s words from earlier, and both men nodded synchronously. They both hoped that they wouldn’t have to have the bully talk with Nadine for years, if ever, but if the topic was needed to be brought about at age seven, then they were prepared to reveal their traumatic childhoods and relive repressed memories in turn for their daughter’s safety and self-confidence, so she wouldn’t end up in the same situation. They wanted her to repeat the words like a mantra.

“Yeah, and because we didn’t say anything we ended up being sad for a very long time” Dan was very vague in his wording, but Nadine seemed to understand as she nodded and looked back down at the photographs.

“Were people mean to you?” she asked, and it was obvious that she was referring to physical aspects rather than verbal.

Dan and Phil exchanged a quick glance before nodding again.

“And that’s why it’s very important that you know that you need to speak up and shout” Phil reminded her, and she nodded.

“And be proud” she added wistfully, and her parents nodded, exchanging a small smile, it seemed as if they were getting through to her. So much so that her sobs were seldom, no longer in an erratic flurry of repetition.

“Yes, and be very proud. Because you’re…” Dan trailed off mid-sentence so Nadine could complete the sentence that was said to her earlier.

“Beautiful and wonderful. Anything I want to be” she reeled off from memory, and smiled upon remembering. She was then pulled into a hug by both her fathers, which she gratefully accepted.

“Here, your auntie Louise got this book for you” Phil handed Nadine a book from the pile once the hug broke apart.

Nadine looked down at the brightly coloured cover, not making out a few of the words that were in a smaller font.

“She said it helped Darcy out a lot when she was your age. Do you want us to read you some?” Dan asked, and Nadine nodded, not bothering to argue and insist how she was ‘seven now and could read herself’ as she normally did.

Louise had bought the book titled ‘ _Inspiration for Beautiful Girls’_ for the now-teenage Darcy when she was around Nadine’s age, when Darcy had gone through a bout of low self-confidence. The book apparently helped a lot according to both Louise and Darcy, which is why Phil now deemed it the best time to bring it out.

As they took it in turns to read a page, Dan and Phil frequently looked down at their daughter to see her eagerly looking up at them, drinking in the quotes and anecdotes that the book exemplified. Gradually, her eyes batted closed and her soft snores filled the room, causing her doting fathers to smile fondly. They both tucked her in and silently left the room, closing the door quietly behind them.

When they awoke the next morning Nadine had already left for her carpool with Zoe and Alfie’s son (the family had moved into the same neighbourhood), and Dan was the first to notice the scrawly written note secured to the fridge with a magnet of the three of them.

_Thankyou, I love you_

_\- Nadine x_

Phil was the first to notice the vlogging camera on the kitchen counter, the on button still flashing, indicating it was recently used. With his curiosity getting the better of him, he flicked onto the last document stored on it, and Nadine’s face from a few hours earlier popped onto the screen.

“Thankyou dad,” she began as she fumbled around with the camera attempting to find a comfortable vlogging angle, “sorry I took your camera but I just want to tell you that I’m proud of myself and I’m going to say something to the girls if they say anything to me today. I love you!” then the clip ended, ending on a grinning Nadine Howell-Lester.

He showed the clip to Dan as Dan handed him the note, and they both smiled, overjoyed that their daughter had a new wave of confidence.

He took a step forward and wrapped his arms around Dan’s neck, “I can’t believe you thought we’d be bad at this parenting thing” Phil stated, blobbing out his tongue as Dan pouted jokingly.

“I said I thought _I’d_ be bad at this parenting thing, there’s a difference, genius” he corrected with a playful eye-roll, and then leaned down slightly to connect his lips with Phil’s.

“Yeah that’s why I married you, so pedantic” Phil narrowed his eyes as it was his turn to pout, but Dan simply grinned and kissed him again, both smiling through the kiss.

 

**Author's Note:**

> Okay so i've been dying to write a songfic for this for absolutely ages, and I thought i'd just get on with it and here we are, I hope you enjoyed it!
> 
> As always, please let me know what you thought and thankyou for your ongoing support xx


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